Why we should ignore the credit rating agencies

Yesterday, Moody’s, the credit rating agency, threatened the UK with a downgrade of its AAA rating. Although the government tried, as usual with any negative economic news, to blame this on the eurozone crisis, Moody’s made clear that their action was primarily the result of the UK’s poor economic outlook, as revealed in the Autumn Statement – lower growth and higher debt and deficits.

It would be tempting for those of us who have been saying for some time that the government’s fiscal policy was damaging the economy to point to Moody’s action as yet another reason for the government to change course. As I put it in the spring “you do not gain credibility by sticking to a strategy that is not working”; unfortunately, that is precisely what the government has done, with unsurprising results.

But we would be wrong to claim Moody’s actions, or indeed any actual downgrading by Moody’s or any other credit ratings agency, as a vindication. The misdeeds and incompetence of the credit ratings agencies in the run-up to the financial crisis has been well documented. What is less well understood is that when it comes to rating sovereign debt, they simply do not know what they are talking about; worse than that, they do not even understand what their own credit ratings mean.

Moody’s says its ratings are “opinions of relative credit risk of financial obligations…they address the possibility that a financial obligation will not be honored as promised”. Standard and Poor’s has much the same definition. So when it comes to rating UK government bonds, what the ratings agencies are assessing is simply the probability that the UK government does not pay back, in pounds, the money it has borrowed. Pounds which can be – and as we have seen over the past two years, have been, even in far less extreme circumstances than a potential default – created at the push of a button by the Bank of England.

The implication is obvious. In the event of nuclear war or an asteroid strike, it is possible the UK government might not pay its debts. Then we’ll have other things to worry about. Otherwise, it will, simply because it can – and because the consequences of not doing so are dreadful. So whatever else happens, holders of gilts will get their money back. Saying that there is any meaningful probability that the UK will default on its debt – which is what downgrading the UK means – is not to take a particular view on the UK economic or fiscal outlook. It is simply not to understand what you are talking about.

So what, in fact, do Moody’s think they are saying? Some commentators try to make excuses for the rating agencies, saying that, despite their official definitions, what they really mean is that people should be worried about putting their money in gilts, because inflation and interest rates might be higher in future, which would reduce the value of any gilts bought now. And indeed gilts investors should rationally take these factors into account.

But if this is in fact the argument, then Moody’s have got the economics completely the wrong way round. They argued yesterday “Growth shortfalls of the kind outlined by the OBR are clearly credit-negative.” In fact, as we have seen in spades over the last year, weak growth is good for gilts. Markets correctly anticipate that if growth is going to be weak, interest rates will stay low for a long time – pushing long-term rates down, and pushing gilt prices up. Anybody who bought gilts a year ago because they, correctly, anticipated “growth shortfalls” would have done very nicely out of it.

We could of course ask Moody’s what they mean. Sarah Carlson, Moody’s UK analyst, was quoted in the FT as saying “We talk about countries having altitude in the triple A ratings space.” No, I don’t have a clue what she’s talking about either. The final argument made by those who think we should pay attention to the rating agencies is that they may be incompetent and their judgements meaningless – but the markets listen. However, as far as countries which can create their own currency are concerned, this just isn’t true. As we saw recently, the market’s response to Standard and Poor’s downgrading of the US was to buy Treasury bonds and push down long-term interest rates.

And this reaction isn’t new or temporary. The chart below shows long-term interest rates in Japan since the late 1980s. Over that period, Japan has experienced a number of “growth shortfalls”, which inspired Moody’s and the other ratings agencies to downgrade it several times. In fact Moody’s first downgraded Japan in 1998.

Now Japan’s economic policy over that period has hardly been a success. But the market and credibility impact of successive downgrades has not exactly shaken market confidence in Japan’s debts; Japan is now paying the lowest long-term interest rates in recorded economic history (dating back to the Babylonian Empire, in fact).

So how should the government, and the markets, respond to the rating agencies? The former should, and the latter in my view will, simply ignore them. The Treasury should stop obsessing about how they will react, stop inviting them in for presentations and discussions about the economic and fiscal outlook, and simply say “We couldn’t care less what the ratings agencies say. The UK will pay its debts. We have a credible and sustainable fiscal policy and we will continue to do so.”

I still think the government’s fiscal policy is wrong; as the National Institute for Economic and Social Research has been saying for some time, in the short term fiscal policy is too tight, and a temporary loosening would improve prospects for output and employment with little or no negative effect on fiscal credibility. But what the ratings agencies say, either in the past or in the future, is not a vindication either of my arguments or the government’s; those need to be settled on the basis of proper economic analysis, not the misleading and ill-thought out views of Moody’s and their ilk.

Who is rating those rating agencies? How do we know that their rating marks are spotlessly right? Do we have to believe them the way the faith followers do? Do they have some connections with banks and investment institutions interested in that rating? Those very important questions seem not to be clearly answered.

Guest

Credit ratings agencies are means to provide economic opinions which obtain funds from some of the organisations upon which they give opinions.

Perhaps it is time they set up investigations of their operations? Internal off course …

jodro2

OK, agreed. But there are deeper issues here. Clearly, the rating agencies are incompetent from an economic point of view, and I do wish that governments, and journalists, would simply ignore them. However, for some reason governments and journalists seem to spend most of their time weighing every rating agencies’ utterance in gold, and in so doing are giving them enormous power. And, given this power, every declaration or rating made by an agency becomes a political, rather than an economic, act. Add the fact that rating agencies are paid for by the banks; witness that many banks and its executives were a year ago under suspicions of fraud, particularly Goldman Sachs, and then note how the rating agencies have managed to destabilise the eurozone enough to put former GS cronies at the head of Greece, Italy and the ECB, and then note how all talk of prosecuting GS (and other) bankers has disappeared, and it’s not hard to smell a rat, and conclude that the rating agencies are a major means through which the banks manipulate sovereign powers, and with that manage to continue to rob the people not only of their money, but now also of their democratic institutions.

HJ777

What ‘misdeeds’?

They were wrong, that’s all. Nobody was obliged to take what they said as gospel then, and neither are they now. If people think that their advice is worthless, then they’ll go bust because no-one will pay them for their advice.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_JFCKYYXBKQAM2ZIDDLTFYS6DEU Bee

Jonathan Portes, is that French? becuase they and the Germans suddenly came up with the same arguments when their rating was threatened.